Quiltmaker Scrap Squad

Thursday, July 12, 2012

When I got my new Quiltmaker's 100 Block, Vol 5 I found so many blocks that I wanted to try. Knowing that I could never get all made into quilts, I desided that would try different blocks, make them into pillows or just save a copy of the block I made. If I really like them, would put them into a quilt. Here is what I have made so far.

This is a paper pieced block. I made from batiks from my stash. I picked a bright colored fabric, also from my stash, for a border and backing. Made a blue stuffed cording for around the outside and used some vintage yellow/white buttons to close the backing. I did the quilting, just using some random designs.

This is my favorite block, so far! When I saw the block in the book, I was not so impressed. The dark background just did not appeal to me, but when I visited Lee's blog and saw how she had used the block with a white background I was completely hooked. Also, I liked how she had used half blocks to stager the rows.

One of my grand-daughter had give me a Moda Layer Cake fabric, called Ruby. I had been looking for something to use for and this fabric seemed to be the perfect answer. Along with that fabric, I added some white for the background, a variety of same colored dark reds for the corners and some light gray for the ring around the center.

A close up of the blocks

I added borders with squares the same size of the 4-patch blocks, seperated by 1" background and then a final outside white border. It made a lovely throw.

I like this block very much and wanted to try it in red and white. I used the fabric scraps from the Cathedral Square block. Have the block made, but haven't quilted it yet. I plan to make a pillow that is to go with the quilt.

When I was invited to make 9 blocks for the Quiltmaker Williamsburg, VA, event Aug 1-4 I was quick to accept. I would love to have attended the event, but since I could not, getting to participate in the block exchange was exciting to me. We could choose any pattern from any 100 Blocks issue and Quiltmaker would assign a color pallette for us to use. I was assigned the Summer Lemonade Stand palette, which is yellow, lime-green, blue-turquoise, orange, & pink. I looked through all my 100 Blocks magazines and selected Four Gables from Volume 5 (page 61).

Since this pattern has a fussy-cut center block, I immediately remembered some fabric from my stash that I thought was very "summer looking". I have always loved the colors but had never found something I wanted to make. Anyway, this piece is what I select to be my focus fabric to make the centers from. This is my fabric selections. I hope that the "cloud blue" will be an OK color.

Each blocks center is from the same fabric, but all are different. Here is one of the blocks.

The green side pieces have squares added to make the points and the pattern shows to mark the squares and use the "stitch & flip" method. I did not mark the squares, but used the method I had posted earlier about using a piece of cardboard to show your line. Chained all of them, checked the back side to see if any triming was needed, pressed, cut out the back two pieces to reduce bulk. Then sewed on the other squares on in a chain and so on and then added the red piece and ended up with a nice 4 1/2" section.

Here is another of the blocks

When I finished all 9 blocks, I laid them all out for a picture, and O-MY-GOSH